Austen Said:

“has given me more credit than can be. The wisest and the best of men — nay, the wisest and best of their actions — may be rendered ridiculous by a person whose first object in life is a joke.”

“Certainly,”

“there are such people, but I hope I am not one of them. I hope I never ridicule what is wise and good. Follies and nonsense, whims and inconsistencies, do divert me, I own, and I laugh at them whenever I can. But these, I suppose, are precisely what you are without.”

“Perhaps that is not possible for anyone. But it has been the study of my life to avoid those weaknesses which often expose a strong understanding to ridicule.”

“Such as vanity and pride.”

“Yes, vanity is a weakness indeed. But pride — where there is a real superiority of mind, pride will be always under good regulation.”

“Your examination of Mr. Darcy is over, I presume,”

“and pray what is the result?”

“I am perfectly convinced by it that Mr. Darcy has no defect. He owns it himself without disguise.”

“No,”

“I have made no such pretension. I have faults enough, but they are not, I hope, of understanding. My temper I dare not vouch for. It is, I believe, too little yielding — certainly too little for the convenience of the world. I cannot forget the follies and vices of others so soon as I ought, nor their offenses against myself. My feelings are not puffed about with every attempt to move them. My temper would perhaps be called resentful. My good opinion once lost, is lost forever.”

“That is a failing indeed!”

“Implacable resentment is a shade in a character. But you have chosen your fault well. I really cannot laugh at it. You are safe from me.”

“There is, I believe, in every disposition a tendency to some particular evil — a natural defect, which not even the best education can overcome.”

“And your defect is a propensity to hate everybody.”

“And yours,”

“is willfully to misunderstand them.”

“Do let us have a little music,”

“Louisa, you will not mind my waking Mr. Hurst?”

the carriage might be sent for them in the course of the day.

it would not be safe for her —

she was not enough recovered;

to be particularly careful that no sign of admiration should now escape him, nothing that could elevate her with the hope of influencing his felicity; sensible that if such an idea had been suggested, his behaviour during the last day must have material weight in confirming or crushing it.

“Though it is difficult,”

“to guess in what way he can mean to make us the atonement he thinks our due, the wish is certainly to his credit.”

“He must be an oddity, I think,”

“I cannot make him out. — There is something very pompous in his style. — And what can he mean by apologising for being next in the entail? — We cannot suppose he would help it if he could. — Could he be a sensible man, sir?”

“In point of composition,”

“the letter does not seem defective. The idea of the olive-branch perhaps is not wholly new, yet I think it is well expressed.”

entreated permission to introduce his friend, Mr. Wickham, who had returned with him the day before from town, and he was happy to say had accepted a commission in their corps.

on his way to Longbourn on purpose to inquire after her.

What could be the meaning of it?

she had neither been seeing him before, nor thinking of him since, with the smallest degree of unreasonable admiration.

the commonest, dullest, most threadbare topic might be rendered interesting by the skill of the speaker.

“About a month,”

“He is a man of very large property in Derbyshire, I understand.”

“As much as I ever wish to be,”

“I have spent four days in the same house with him, and I think him very disagreeable.”

“Upon my word I say no more here than I might say in any house in the neighbourhood, except Netherfield. He is not at all liked in Hertfordshire. Everybody is disgusted with his pride. You will not find him more favourably spoken of by anyone.”

“I should take him, even on my slight acquaintance, to be an ill-tempered man.”

“I do not at all know; but I heard nothing of his going away when I was at Netherfield. I hope your plans in favour of the ——shire will not be affected by his being in the neighbourhood.”

“Indeed!”

“Good heavens!”

“but how could that be? How could his will be disregarded? Why did you not seek legal redress?”

“This is quite shocking! He deserves to be publicly disgraced.”

“But what,”

“can have been his motive? What can have induced him to behave so cruelly?”

“I had not thought Mr. Darcy so bad as this — though I have never liked him. I had not thought so very ill of him. I had supposed him to be despising his fellow-creatures in general, but did not suspect him of descending to such malicious revenge, such injustice, such inhumanity as this.”

“I do remember his boasting one day, at Netherfield, of the implacability of his resentments, of his having an unforgiving temper. His disposition must be dreadful.”

“To treat in such a manner the godson, the friend, the favourite of his father!”